ND/NF 2024 Shorts Program I
New Directors/New Films 2024
April 3 - 14, 2024
This program of short films features Rachel Gutgarts’s Via Dolorosa (France), Shuli Huang’s Goodbye First Love (U.S.), Inês Teixeira’s Shimmering Bodies (Portugal), Aliha Thalien’s Nos Îles (France), and Fatima Kaci’s The Voice of Others (France).
Via Dolorosa
Rachel Gutgarts, 2023, France, 11m
Hebrew with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Inspired by early photographic techniques, Via Dolorosa is an immersive animation documentary that takes us through Jerusalem’s local punk scene, where director Rachel Gutgarts spent her youth. Hoping to find atonement, Gutgarts depicts instead a permanent state of war hovering over tales of violence, addiction, sexuality, religion, and racism as told by teenagers approaching adulthood.
Goodbye First Love
Shuli Huang, 2024, U.S., 13m
Mandarin with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Director and cinematographer Shuli Huang visits his first love in Frankfurt on a dark, rainy day during a work trip in Europe. In a small studio, two men share loving and contradictory memories of their past relationship in Beijing, pointing to tales of what could have been in weary, melancholic silences.
Shimmering Bodies
Inês Teixeira, 2023, Portugal, 23m
Portuguese with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
As she walks by her high school, Mariana is surprised by Pedro’s invitation to spend the weekend at his parents’ house away from the city. Inês Teixeira offers a tender, delicate portrait of young love, shyness, and the shape-shifting experience of sexual awakening by giving oneself to another body yearning for affection.
Nos Îles
Aliha Thalien, 2023, France, 23m
French with English subtitles
North American Premiere
As Aliha Thalien’s camera takes us deep into Martinique’s landscape—nature, beaches, ghostly urban spaces, a rock in the ocean where an old slave ship ran aground—young friends discuss their heritage and identity amid the island’s colonial history and political memory, a desire for independence, and a complex relationship with mainland France.
The Voice of Others
Fatima Kaci, 2023, France, 30m
French and Arabic with English subtitles
New York Premiere
A Tunisian interpreter working for asylum services struggles to refuse emotional connections when translating stories of survival and abuse from people seeking another life in France. With rules favoring suspicion against personal tragedies, Fatima Kaci films an institutionalized mistrust of others and a character’s quest for empathy in the choice of words that carry the weight of a nation’s colonial past.
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